“Into this house we’re born,

Into this world we’re thrown.”

The Doors – “Riders on the Storm” (1971)

The Lion was going to kill Talia, of that much she was pretty sure.

The storm reached out in all of its manifest and terrifying fury and clutched at the darting shuttlecraft, tearing it this way and that like some monstrous mastiff whose powerful jaws had execrably latched to the neck of a terrified rabbit, intent on shaking its prize to death.

Crewman Talia Harris reached for another vomit – bag and managed to spurt out a queasy “Are you sure that this much turbulence is normal sir?” before she spurted the contents of her last meal aboard the USS Astute noisily into the bag.

For his part, Lieutenant Aslaine seemed to be having the time of his life as his tan – furred hands and clawed fingers tapped as confidently across the controls of the shuttlecraft “Azimuth”, if the big Caitian was taking his favorite ride out for an afternoon drive in the countryside.

“Turbulence?” Aslaine wrinkled his snout in quiet amusement and the did something finicky to the controls and the floor of the shuttle seemed to drop hundreds of feet suddenly, taking Talia’s stomach (and whatever contents she had yet to evict) with it.

“This isn’t ‘turbulence’, crewman!” Aslaine chuckled at the thought and suddenly the shuttle yawed awfully to port and Alia was secretly glad she was strapped firmly to her seat and dearly wished she could keep the contents of the vomit – bag similarly secured.

“It’s not?” Talia croaked pitifully, her face already taking on an unhealthy greenish tinge, already threatening to make the young Field – medical Specialist  to bear more than a passing resemblance to the Echelon – class cruiser’s own Chief Operations Officer, the Orion – Lieutenant Zhelu, whose own fate had seemed to have chosen the far more sensible path of remaining back on the ship in orbit.

“By the maker, no!” Aslaine rumbled good – naturally, “This is me avoiding turbulence!” The former starfighter pilot turned to regard the rating with his glowering gold – predators eyes. To prove the point, he raised both of his hands from the pilots controls and the Type-14 vessel promptly went into a flat spin!

Talia screwed her eyes tightly shut and steeled herself to meet her own maker, but the net effect was disorientating and her stomach already so traumatized that she elected to meet her death with her eyes open – not that the concept held much more comfort.

Lieutenant Aslaine replaced his paws and the tumbling craft returned to some semblance of control and the leonine – officer purred unconcerned.

“You see crewman, the mistake most pilots make is trying to control the storm, to bend it to their will, which as you would agree is plaintively ridiculous and smacks largely of hubris.”

“Obviously.” Talia whimpered, as she wasn’t entirely sure if being dead would actually be any worse than what she was currently experiencing, trapped in this tiny cabin with a creature who was, quite obviously, a madman.

“The translational vectors alone are of a scale quite unimaginable to factor and that’s before you really dial down into the finer points of attendant aerodynamic theory.” The big – cat smiled his long, predator’s smile, showing lots of fang. “You’d have an easier time trying to stop a boulder with a fly!”

The shuttle bucked violently once more as the pilot let a sudden thermal updraft take the ship and hurl it skywards into the raging darkness of the rain – driven storm clouds.

“No crewman, when faced with such irresistible forces, the only truly sensible alternative is to take a leaf out of the playbook of those ancient mariners from the age of sail and run with the storm!”

“Oh, my heavens, he’s actually enjoying this!” She realized in horror as this carnival ride of chaos rolled on and on with sickening intensity.

For his own part, Lieutenant Aslaine was actually enjoying being out of the Flight Control Centre and back in the pilot’s seat for a change.

Even if this was no Valkyrie, the Type-14 had pleasant enough flight – characteristics and whilst the violent attentions of the Ion – storms that ravaged Encedis#-5 weren’t exactly akin to the red-blood exhilaration of dogfighting, admittedly they did provide an interesting – enough challenge to navigation so as not to be entirely mundane.

“And like those wayfarers of old.” Aslaine nodded towards the forward view that was entirely predominated with terrible. Violent flashes of lightning. “The real art is in reading the storm, get to understand its mood, know its ways, anticipating what it’s going to do next and then acting decisively when you see your….opening !!!”

With that last word, Aslaine suddenly pitched the “Azimuth” down onto it’s nose and pushed the shuttle into a lurching, corkscrewing, steep dive directly downwards….where the ocean normally lived.

Now Talia did let out a small scream, the vomit – bag suddenly forgotten, lurched from her fingers and smacked wetly against the back of the cabin.

“I hope you’re going to clean that up?” Lieutenant Aslaine remarked dryly as the “Azimuth” suddenly bellied into a broad swathe of slipstream that made the interior vibrate for a few seconds and then the craft was down into a band of comparatively more stable weather and Crewman Harris would have been gratefully relieved to see the iron – crew whitecaps of the sea below the, had she still not been struggling with the shocked realization that she had been about to be spread liberally across its surface at many kilometers per hour.

She could say nothing, so that’s exactly what she did.

Now below the worst of the raging tempest, Aslaine put aside his personal amusement and turned his mind to the serious task at hand.

“Sensors are picking up a massive energetic signature from the Rig – facility that the Captain had been intending on visiting. Some sort of catastrophic event if these reading are true.” The Caitian murred grimly as he studied the data coming in from the shuttles onboard sensor – pallet. “I’m reading antimatter residue, some gamma – radiation echoes – all the signs of a recent core – breach. If the rig lost containment, it’s unlikely anyone that didn’t evacuate could withstand a blast like that, close-in.”

Wiping her mouth from the last vestiges of bile, Talia managed to focus her own attention and resume the mindset of the pararescue operator that she really was and began to scan her own instruments for signs of a distress beacon.

“There’s an awful lot of interphasic interference on the transmission bandwidths. Harris commented with a note of caution in her voice. “Like nothing I’ve seen before, maybe it’s the lightning causing phantom returns? How odd.”

“Interphasic?” Aslaine rumbled as he brought the ship in to run a visual sweep of the Rig.

The Rig proper was gone.

Most of the superstructure had collapsed into the sea under the titanic effects of the energy that had been unleashed. A serried confusion of twisted girders and blackened support structure was all that remained of the upper portion of the rig.

The vast legs that supported the platform still stood, defiant waves imploring at their mighty shins and some parts of the vast bundles of tubules, where the rig had once ingested gigatons of seawater to treat and then returned it back to the seas full of life, still remained – but now the rig only nurtured death.

“Yes, strange  fluctuations modulating all across the phase – shift, certainly not consistent with a containment loss event. This is something else, it’s as if the residual energy released by whatever went on here can’t decide what phase it should be settling in, so its ‘pinballing’ across the spectrum.”

Lieutenant Aslaine peered out of the port window and surveyed the destruction below with a somber frame of reasoning. If Captain Mc Dowell and Chief Søgaard had been aboard at the time whatever happened down there had happened, then this wasn’t a rescue mission anymore.

“No sign of the “Sounion”, either.” Aslaine commented as he banked the shuttle away from the blackened carcass of Rig D31. “Maybe they made it off but finding them down there would be like trying to find an angel dancing on the head of a pin.”

“Wait one, Sir.” Talia’s delicate black – brows met in a frown.

“What is it Crewman? Spit it out.” Aslaine rumbled with habitual irritation.

“Could be nothing Lieutenant, but I’m reading a similar Interphasic energy signature, faint – but the telemetry matches. Contact is 14 Nmi South/South-east. Routing range and bearing to your board.” Harris murmured as she sent the data to the pilot.

Aslaine looked down and nodded.

“Something’s better than nothing at this stage, changing course to intercept.”

With practiced hands the Caitian brought the “Azimuth” down so it’s underside threatened to skim the tops of the rolling ocean swell. Outside weather conditions were atrocious (which seemed about standard for this planet) and visibility was poor. Rain lashed the forward cockpit canopy with such relentless ferocity so as to render it nearly useless. Lightning flashed with such frequency that the white – topped waves seemed as immobile as stone – the sea a frozen tableau.

“The interphasic signature is fading.” Harris kept a running commentary as her eyes frantically searched the sensor-feed. “It spiked for about forty seconds and now it seems to be moving off in an easterly direction.”

“It’s moving?” Aslaine repeated incredulously.

“Makes no sense I know, but that’s what the data return is saying.”

Aslaine turned his attention back to the flight, sensor anomalies were all well and good but they didn’t seem to be getting the searchers any closer to understanding the fate of the CO or unravelling the mystery of what transpired at the Rig she had been visiting.

Then.

It was his keen predators’ eyes that picked out the beacon, pulsing faintly in the gloaming distance.

“Contact!” Harris shouted at almost the same time. “Starfleet distress pulsar activated. Somebody’s in the water. Starboard bow, 1 nautical mile out!”

“I see them.” Aslaine nodded as he slowed the shuttle and began his final approach. With transporter – use on the planet effectively useless, they were going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.

“Standby Crewman.” The Lieutenant ordered as he triggered the rearward hatch to open.

“It’s time to get wet!”